Raat Akeli Hai - The Bansal Murders

On the night of a wedding the head of the Bansal family is found killed in his own bed. He had married a young woman that day. The house holds family members, servants and relatives, each with an interest and a lie. The case goes to Inspector Jatil Yadav: a man in his forties who still lives with his mother and whom nobody around him takes seriously. As the investigation proceeds the family's secrets come out and pressure arrives from above. Honey Trehan directs. Nawazuddin Siddiqui plays Jatil Yadav, with Radhika Apte, Chitrangada Singh, Rajat Kapoor, Revathi and Deepti Naval in the cast. Trehan worked for years as a casting director and this is his first film as director, which explains why every face in the crowded cast sits where it should. The narrative has the classic shape of a murder in a closed house, but the ground is Kanpur; caste, property and the position of women inside a family are part of the investigation. The best thing in it is Jatil Yadav. Clever but coarse, subjected to belittling remarks about the colour of his skin and pushed toward marriage, he is not a detective hero. It was released on Netflix. The running time is long and the interrogations repeat in the middle. Who it is for: viewers who like slow detective films and Indian crime cinema. Who it is not for: it runs close to two and a half hours, there are many characters, and the solution leans on a crowded scene of explanation.